Throughout October, a group of protesters mounted a pro-life demonstration
at the Womenservices abortion clinic here in Buffalo, NY. I'd pass them
anytime I traversed the city's northeast side on Main St., and the prospect
of a counterdemonstration nagged at me for days.

I don't have anything against people mucking around outside a clinic.
As long as they don't go contradicting themselves by firebombing the place,
protesters are protected in their right to express their stance in public
zones. And as much as the abortion argument--which hinges on whether conception
or birth demarcates the beginning of life--continues to inspire both sides,
it's pretty damn useless to shout noise at the opposing side.

After all, the idea that birth marks the beginning of life removes the
male from the role of creator by nine months. This distancing of power
is as much of a theft of control to pro-life men and their subservient
womenfolk as the theft of a pregnant woman's right to choice. No amount
of rational argumentation or street-corner sermonizing can make someone
within a power structure willingly give up control, wherever it manifests.
As a result, the dispute stagnates in its un-resolvability. And everyone
just keeps shouting.

But Buffalo is too critical a battlefield in the War on Fetuses to not
do anything. This city boasts a newsworthily volatile Life-Vs-Choice historiscape.
In 1992, Mayor Jimmy Griffin invited Operation Rescue, a prolife organization,
to Buffalo to harangue area clinics. "If they can close down one
abortion mill," Griffin had said to reporters--no, really--"they've
done their job." A thousand protesters showed up, with over 600 arrests
occurring in the ensuing chaos--a period lovingly reminisced upon as the
Spring of Life. Fortunately, they didn't do their job--outnumbered by
counterdemonstrators, they left town two weeks later. Buffalo ain't Wichita.

And it wasn't ten years ago that Barnett Slepian, one of the few abortion-providing
doctors in Buffalo at the time, was sniped in his home by the appallingly
inconsistent "pro-lifer" James Kopp. To celebrate, 250 pro-killing-in-some-cases-but-not-in-others
demonstrators reconvened in the city the following spring. The resultant
demonstration rapidly escalated into a hostile mish-mashing of religious
hate platforms, with sub-protests against homosexuality, feminism, and
public education sprouting up around the city. Protesters even utilized
their freedom of expression to contest freedom of expression itself, as
captured in an April 1999 Village Voice piece:

"Once outside the [Barnes & Noble]
bookstore, a few dozen Operation Rescuers unfurl a 'Boycott Barnes &
Noble' banner and--unaccountably, given that the action is against child
pornography--haul out the standard fetus pictures. Meanwhile, David Lackey,
who's been jailed 17 times for demonstrating, preaches from the highway
divider outside the strip mall, waving photocopied examples of child pornography.
Though the store stocks little of the material that Lackey finds objectionable
(books of photography by Jock Sturges, David Hamilton, and Sally Mann),
he holds his own copy [emphasis added] of Mann's Immediate Family
so he can easily demonstrate its pornographic nature to passersby. Save
the throng of reporters, however, there are none."

This year's protest was not quite as glamorous. It consisted of a few
dozen suburbanites, taking turns waving "Life is God's Choice"
placards until about 9pm each day. They even had an old blind guy man
the post on a few exceptionally cold evenings. I wanted to ignore them
until they went away, but I found myself inadvertently planning out anonymous
pranks and subtle maladies in my head each time I'd pass. Halloween was
coming up, after all, and I hadn't properly celebrated in years.

God One, Constitution Zip

I was passively concocting a trick for the pro-sniper bunch when news
of the Phelps settlement broke.

Fred Phelps is a controversial figure who defies blue state liberals'
ability to holistically categorize religious botards as pro-war. Actually,
Phelps' position on the war is unclear, but he and his organization, the
Westboro Baptist Church, stage protests at the funerals of American soldiers
who have lost their lives in Iraq. Their goal is to remind America that
God is punishing our troops because, of course, the United States embraces
homosexuality. The group notoriously waves signs with slogans like "Thank
God for Dead Soldiers," and "Fags Die, God Laughs."

Largely in response, President Bush signed the Respect for America's
Fallen Heroes Act in 2006, which prohibits protests within 500 feet of
cemeteries within an hour of a soldier's funeral. And on October 31 this
year, Phelps was forced to pay an $11M award to the family of a Marine
at whose funeral the group had protested.

Phelps' unsightly argument suffers from several lacunae. First of all,
America doesn't embrace homosexuals; it fucking hates them. After
the momentary penetration of "Will and Grace" /" Queer
Eye" unstraightness into pop culture started a few years back, America
responded with near-unanimous support for a deluge of anti-gay legislation.
During 2004, for example, fourteen states moved to ban same-sex marriage,
and as much as the media may have made a fuss about it, a huge majority
of Americans supported it.

Secondly, Phelps is so clearly haunted by hidden homosexual inclinations
that his tragic, pulsating repression emanates to anyone who has ever
double-taken the man's ferociously homophobic platform. Fortunately, Phelps'
constitutional jouncing-about will inevitably lead him to the one place
that can alleviate his fixation: Prison, or as we all know it: Gayrape
Agonytown, USA.

The most common reaction is to regard Phelps as a lunatic. People just
tend to write him off as a sick, cruel bastard, pointing out that, while
war may be unfortunate, it is unavoidable, and everyone knows that God
supports our troops. He's on our side. No one in their right mind
would ever speak ill of an American Hero, right? But it takes a bit of
selective cognizance to ignore the "God Hates Fags" position.
God--as far as anyone can really tell--is a sick, cruel bastard himself.
I mean, if he can just go gallivanting around, inventing wars here and
waging famine on infants there…then why can't he be a gay-basher
like everyone else?

Regardless, this is a case where you have to assume the most absurd,
frontier interpretation of the Christian religion to be the most likely,
and accept it anyway. And, alternately, this is where you assume that
the most absurd, frontier interpretation of the First Amendment is also
as plausible, and start warming up to wacko advocacy groups like the WBC.

No matter how distasteful or deplorable someone's message might be, they
still have a right proclaim it. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), who
along with Ron Paul (R-TX) and David Wu (D-OR) opposed the Fallen Heroes
Act, summed it up best in a Washington Times interview: "It's
true that when you defend civil liberties you are typically defending
people who do obnoxious things... You play into their hand when you let
them provoke you into overdoing it."

Phelps is right; this is free speech. You signed up for it. Everyone
signed up for it. This is what it entails, reductio ad absurdum,
right? So let's get used to it. Or else let's get out the red pen.

A botched civil liberties science experiment

Hypothesis: Bird poop sucks.

Materials: 10 lb. Bird seed.

Procedure:

At 2:30am on Sunday, October 28, I rounded up a few friends to help me
with this experiment. As we gathered around my car in a cold Buffalo parking
lot, I popped the trunk to reveal a ten pound package of bird seed. I
then filled three large plastic groceries bags evenly with the seeds and
distributed them to my cohorts.

We pulled up to the curb and filed out of the vehicle when we got to
the clinic on Main St. As we began to walk southward on towards the Tri
Main Center, we sliced our bags open. Once the seed was liberally scattered
about the sidewalk, we ducked into a bar across the street for a drink.

Results:

Unfortunately, the experiment didn't quite fuel the merciless shit storm
I had imagined. When I returned the next day, the protesters were still
gathered in front of the building, smilingly sedate. There were white
splotches here and there, but no mayhem, no people running and screaming
in the street. I cursed and shook my fist furiously at no one in particular.

But I am happy, looking back, that I'd participated to some extent in
the madness. Freedom of Expression protects anti-abortion protesters.
The WBC tried to push the envelope when they protested soldiers' funerals.
And I was prepared to push it too.